The 5th of November is the twentieth anniversary of my mum’s passing. It’s been a raw wound for a long long time. She died aged 50 and so I’ve outlived her by three years so far.
She passed three months after my wife and I married – Annette and I had been together nine years by this point and mum and my younger brother (Who was exactly 25 years younger than me, and born a couple of months after Annette and I started dating) had become part of our entourage when we went places. To the point that mum used to joke that she’d come with us on honeymoon. We got married in Barbados, and mum came with us. Well, for a bit. We’d booked two weeks in barbados, the wedding would happen one week in and we invited everyone who wanted to go with us (they were all paying their own way, though we had secured a bit of a deal) so in the end we had a fair number with us. All for one week. Except mum “well, if I’m going that far, I might as well go for two weeks – so I’ll just come with you” No, mum. I love you, but you can come out one week early and stay for the wedding week and Annette and I can have a week alone. And that’s what happened.
When mum died, I was working in IT support for a charity and got a phone call telling me to come home. I can’t remember a lot of what happened, it all became a bit of a blur – there was a 16 year age gap between me and mum, and in an odd way we grew up together, I think. Mark, my brother one year my junior, died age 26 and so I felt very keenly that with mum going there were memories that I had that were shared between her, me and mark, that no longer existed for anyone but me.
It was a rough time. I think on the day, I ran into the bathroom (multiple times) just wanting to hide. I found it very difficult.
And for years, there was a numbness. I remember I used to day dream about what would happen if I won a million quid, and I remember one day, after mum died, having the same thought and suddenly cutting it short with “Well, if you’re going to make any sort of wish, you dickhead, why don’t you wish your mum were still alive”.
Mum was cremated and her ashes put in a grave with my brother’s ashes. A grave that, after his death, I used to go with mum to so she could clean it. We’d joke about stuff and it was far from a sombre thing (mum and I shared a very dark and dry sense of humour), it was kind of joyful. Mark and her never got on as he was growing up, it wasn’t until he left home at age 17 that they started having any sort of respect for each other. And at the grave mum would fuss around it with a tenderness I think she wished she could have expressed to him when he was alive.
(As a side note, and since I’m baring all here, Mark died aged 26. Mum and Dad were in Canada, and one of his friends had been in touch to say they hadn’t seen him, so they contacted me and got me to pop round the house. It was locked. From the inside. So I phoned the police, who came and knocked the door in. Once the door was down, I asked if I could go first, because – well, it felt like it would be more appropriate. And Mark was lying on the floor, having fallen off the sofa, eyes open and long passed. I had to phone them in Canada to tell them. It was awful. Coroner reported death by natural causes, Mum and Dad were convinced it was Sudden Adult Death Syndrome – which, at the time, wasn’t something many people had heard of or believed in. Northern Ireland being the centre of crackpots though, and Mark, at the time knowing pals who were in to witchcraft, the Judge decided there may be something more sinister going on – I stood up and pointed out that had he died two months earlier he’d’ve found a bunch of star trek books and that’s as likely as witchcraft to be the cause of his death.)
But, that, of course, made me visiting mum’s grave all the more difficult. Bad enough it’s where mum’s ashes are but it’s also – the drive up, the standing at the grave, the tidying of it – all reminders of mum being alive.
So I’ve been a handful of times, usually at the suggestion (if not prodding) of my wife. And it’s been difficult.
But this year, twenty years, the wounds don’t hurt. There is, of course a gap in the heart where my mum is, but it’s a gap that’s slowly grown over with new tissue.
I’m going to go up, say some goodbyes, and phone my aunt – her sister – who she used to talk to pretty much every day and I’m sure felt the loss as keenly as me.
And I think the hurt will stop.
Here’s the comic strip, I bring out every so often when I talk about my mum, that I drew now five years ago. It all remains true. There are, of course, more things I’d add, I’d like to tell mum about the house, about my brother John about Nathan going to university, about Thomas’s starting GCSEs. But she knows. She knows.
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